


Saudade

by Omgthatsfun (orphan_account)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Gen, mentions of rivetra but this is mostly a story of petra through her father's eyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-05
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 15:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1272265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Omgthatsfun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three days after Petra left for training, her father sat down at the kitchen table and cried. Saudade: a deep emotional state of nostalgic or deeply melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saudade

**Author's Note:**

> Written for nothalfsocurious. Originally posted on my tumblr account. I realized I only have 3 out of my 100+ snk fics posted on here, and decided to put a few more on here! Eh. Shrug.

Three days after Petra left for training, her father sat down at the kitchen table and cried.

He’d seen a lark outside the window, and turned to call Petra over, so that they could watch the bird quietly and see if it would sing for them.

But there was no one there save for his tired wife with her tired, worn out eyes, who’d just woken up from her exhausted sleep.

She looked at him and he pulled out a chair so that he could finally sob.

Petra’s first letters arrived after a week and he read them desperately, wished he could mold his daughter out of the ink and pull her from the paper so that he could hold her again.

In the mornings he’d open his eyes ands stare at the ceiling, waiting for the excited patter of her feet down the hall as the sun rose, as she rushed downstairs. His wife slid closer and said “I’m also scared, but she will be back soon.”

The next time he saw her, during a small break a year later, he cracked an inside joke and Petra wrinkled her nose up. Her mouth twisted the way it always did when she thought too hard, and instead of finishing the punchline, she smiled and nodded. He missed her badly, then.

But she still listened to songbirds with him, and she still hugged him tight with her head beneath his chin. She brushed her mother’s hair in the evening like she hadn’t been gone for more than a day.

Petra visited a few times after that, her shoulders and back always bruised, her posture straighter than ever, and her smile just as bright.

By the opened window with the view of the tree, she read him poetry with a quiet voice that let him hear the chirp of birds in the distance.

She gripped his hand so that he could pay attention at her favorite parts, and her calluses scraped agains the skin of his knuckles.

When she graduated, there was no visit between her transition from training grounds to barracks, but she never said farewell in her letters.

He held onto this, told himself that Petra was in the top ten, that she was simply moving into a new home.

Then Petra’s mother died.

His wife left with the taste of a stale cough still on her lips, hair frayed and fanned out on a pillow. Sunken cheeks and bones sunken into the mattress.

He wrote the letter dozens of times, and each time his tears smudged the ink until nothing could be read. Finally he forced himself to scratch out the message, gave the smallest description of the funeral he could manage, and ended the letter with please come home.

He saw her by his boots in the closet where she’d hide as a child. Saw her in the doorway with a bloodied lip and a scraped up knee. Heard her laugh through the open window of the kitchen and recognized her footsteps when the stairs creaked and sighed.

The letter he received in response stank of wet ink and salt, and when he opened it, it was like looking into Petra’s open face. Letters were smudged and smeared but the words were strong. She said Papa, I can’t.

Winter came and she did not mention that he never wrote back. He did not say that he was too furious to respond.

They sat in front of the fireplace, their backs to the kitchen and any memories of a brittle voice singing, letting the heat dry the wetness from their hair and their faces.

She wrote to him again as soon as she returned to the barracks, and this time he replied, because his chest ached too much from seeing the children around the neighborhood and missing his daughter from years ago.

The woman who wrote to him was not that child, but she was still his child.

She always spared him the details of bloodshed, but with pride she mentioned her kill count had gone up by three. With pride she said that her skills only grew sharper and that her speed had increased.

She never wrote about surviving with any pride, and her father could practically hear the humble tone of her voice. In her words he saw her eyes glance to the left as she sidestepped the fact that she lived where others died and she returned where others stayed behind.

He could not hold her, so he wrote back I love you, Pet.

The next winter she spent one week less with him, claimed that there were injured soldiers in the barracks and she’d volunteered to watch over them. So like his Petra to do that, and so he sent her off with a kiss to the forehead and a hug so tight he was sure his old bones wouldn’t forget it for a few days.

She kept him informed of everything. Of her new squad mates and the eccentrics that commanded her. Of Auruo and Jacob. Erd and Gunther and Lilith. Squad Leader Zoe who laughed like she meant it and inspired Petra to do the same.

Captain Levi who did not tolerate much of anything it seemed. He told her she was “decent” after a mission, and Petra’s words jumped off the page with pride.

Petra’s father read these letters and looked out the window, remembered the way she’d beamed at him after correctly guessing the name of a songbird using only her ears.

The second winter after she’d joined the Scouting Legion, Petra did not come until the very last weeks.

He received three letters explaining her absence, and in one said that her Captain needed a helping hand around the castle.

The word “captain” was forced into a tiny space, scrawled in like an alarmed after thought, twisted and ugly. I must stay to help out CaptainLevi.

When she visited at last, she cleaned the entire house from top to bottom and made him coffee. The house smelled like home again, felt like home when Petra kissed him on the cheek, but the coffee was too strong and needed sugar.

Lilith and Jacob disappeared from the letters, and no one took their place. Every week, Petra’s father sat in the same chair in his kitchen, tired back fighting against the creaking wood, and read through the scratched out bits, the smudged lines, the missing punctuation.

Some letters smelled of salt, some smelled of sunshine, some smelled of wine. Others he couldn’t recognize the scent of, and the parchment was much thicker than the kind Petra usually used.

The last letter came quietly, unexpectedly, and this time he could see the stretch of his daughters smile across the paper. He saw where her hand trembled and where she rushed in excitement.

Her squad had been dubbed a Special Operations Squad. Levi, it seemed, valued Petra’s skills so highly that she was involved in a mission of utmost importance.

There was no need to worry, Papa, because Levi was a capable leader. Her squad mates were gifted soldiers, and she believed in herself. 

She thought Levi would make it to see the end of the war, and she wanted to see the end with him.

What better captain could Petra devote herself to than Levi?

Her father felt their strung together winters slip away from him, knew now where she’d been the past few years. Knew now that it was only a matter of time before she became a memory, another phantom to turn his back to at the fireplace.

At the returning march of the soldiers, he brought her letter and his aching heart in his hand, ready to practically beg for one winter more, one year more, He could not live forever, but Petra and her captain were so young, with months and years for each other, while he fed on letters and faded phantom memories that he found tucked away in the dusty corners of his house. 

Well, the Captain would not look him in the eye, and when he said Petra’s name, an injured boy began to cry. He felt a strangely familiar rip in his chest and couldn’t find a single strawberry blonde in the entire march through the streets.

He returned home and pressed the letter to his chest, pressed his daughter’s smile to his heart and sat down at the kitchen table to cry.

But he could not cry for too long, bitter tears only lasting a short time, because he realized that how he felt now was not so different than how he felt any other day.


End file.
